


Save Yourself, Kill Them All

by Twisted_Barbie



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: M/M, Missing Scene, fredragon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2015-10-26
Packaged: 2018-04-28 07:43:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5083561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Twisted_Barbie/pseuds/Twisted_Barbie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Missing scene before Will’s assault in the motel room.</p>
<p>Frederick Chilton has a visitor in the hospital</p>
            </blockquote>





	Save Yourself, Kill Them All

It was a muted atmosphere inside the burns unit in the Baltimore State Hospital. The silence was only interrupted by the equipment monitoring the patient’s vitals and the steady air pressure inside the hyperbaric oxygen chamber insuring it remained three times as much as normal. 

Doctor Frederick Chilton lay motionless beneath the fluorescent lights with his neck propped up by a rolled white cotton towel while his feet were bandaged to his ankles and his hands were bandaged to his wrists and a cotton sheet covered his dignity from his waist down to his knees. Sleep was evasive though not from pain as his nerve endings had been destroyed by the fire but for the vile thoughts that plagued his mind. 

He turns his now bald head after the fire claimed his hair, eyebrows and stubble to the left and his eyes fall to the small glass table with a clay vase holding wilting purple hyacinths. A gift from the absent Doctor Bloom. He eyes them briefly before he looks into the shadowed corner of the room beside the door as though he could see the serpent that lurked there. 

“I know that you are there,” he speaks slowly finding it easier to speak without pronouncing P’s F’s or M’s as he hadn’t the lips to frame the sound. 

Slowly the shadows in the corner manifest into a man clad in dark clothes standing six foot two with short black hair and a bruised and scarred pale face and indiscernible pale blue eyes. Francis Dolarhyde said nothing as he emerged from the shadows like a phantom in the night and regarded the terrible thing he had created with a tilt of his head. 

“You let ne live,” Frederick speaks faltering on the M. 

“The Dragon is merciful,” Francis replies in a gruff slow measured way embarrassed by his speech impediment due to his cleft palate. 

“Why?” Frederick asks, noticing the flowers clutched in Francis’ right gloved hand and tied together with string. A homemade bouquet of red, purple, white and pink carnations. Francis does not answer, as he did not expect him to. “Do you think God is in attendance here?” He asks using Francis’ previously asked question. Francis steps forward then nonthreatening but intrigued. “We ‘rey when we are a’raid but I have nothing leht to ‘ear.” Francis listens intently easily following his corrupted speech due to his own garbled tongue that he was viciously ridiculed and beaten for. 

He takes another step forward and leaves the shadows behind him as he steps into the light of the oxygen chamber reminiscent of Blake’s painting The Entombment. He imagines himself as one of the mourners glorying in the golden light of his saviour but that is not so. If he was the Great Red Dragon then Chilton was surely The Agony in the Garden. 

“And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him.” He quotes and Frederick laughs humourlessly, eyes, one cloudy the other dark and barely open never once leave his face.

“And being in agony he ‘rayed more earnestly and his sweat was as it were great dro’s of blood falling down to the ground.” Frederick finishes and watches as Francis places his carnations among the dead hyacinths and presses a gloved hand to the glass chamber. 

It is an amnesty and Frederick lifts his own heavily bandaged hand mirroring Francis’ actions. He could see now, more than he ever did before, Francis did enlighten him though not in the way he had meant to. By stripping their layers of clothing Francis had not only bared their bodies but he had bared their souls and in a baptism of fire their souls had bonded. He was sure it was why he had not been killed, and why his heart did not ache when Jack Crawford crowed about the suicide of the Dragon. 

They were one and the same, both overlooked, mocked and abused and at some point used as a weapon while Hannibal Lecter was the trigger man. He had become expendable and was duly betrayed by Hannibal, Jack Crawford, Alana Bloom and the Judas himself Will Graham. Francis too would become expendable and the thought sickened him as he was thought only as a living breathing weapon. He was more than that, so much more, that much he had shown him and he would see him bite the hand that fed him bullshit. 

“Hannibal Lecter is not your ‘riend.” Francis’ hand drops from the glass and there is intensity in his eyes that would have once struck fear in his heart but now he can barely afford the strength to shrug. “Will Graham is his lover,” to Hannibal’s own mind at least, whether they had consummated their relationship he could not say. 

“No,” Francis replies with a shake of his head. 

“He wants to be with Will Graham. You are a neans to an end.” Francis clutches the sides of his head covering his ears as his lips speak a mantra of no’s as he crumbles in on himself. “I see you,” Frederick whispers watching Francis’ struggle. “I see you,” he says louder breaking through the maelstrom of Francis’ mind and anchoring him. “I see you and you are beauti’ul.” 

Frederick’s voice defeats the demons inside his mind and he picks himself up guided by Frederick’s light. The knowledge that he had been used angers him turning his vision red and all he could see was fire. Hannibal was supposed to understand but instead he was no better than his grandmother using him as leverage against her daughter while Hannibal used him against Will. Hannibal had spoken to him, whispered words as though he meant them and truly understood him but he did not care. To him the Great Red Dragon was lesser than Will Graham and they had both used him directing his ire to Frederick and like a fool he took the bait, hurting a man that could have been his greatest ally. 

“Save yoursel’” Frederick croaks. “Kill them all.” He nods and takes one long last lingering look at Frederick before disappearing into the shadows once more. If Hannibal wanted Will Graham then he would see it done and they would be united in death as he had been bound to Frederick in fire.

**Author's Note:**

> This is just my head canon of why Francis chose not to break Will’s back after he had gone into such detail about where exactly he would snap it. Also I hope it explains why he was angry (and stupid) enough to take on the Murder Husbands singled handed. Thanks for reading. 
> 
> What the flowers mean;  
> Purple hyacinth- I am sorry, please forgive me, sorrow.  
> Red carnation- Love, admiration.  
> Purple carnation- Capriciousness   
> White carnation- Innocence and pure love  
> Pink carnation- I’ll never forget you


End file.
